of W.V.H.A. I held this position until the end of the war. Pohl,
as Chief of W.V.H.A., and Kaltenbrunner, as Chief of R.S.H.A., often
conferred personally and frequently communicated with each other
concerning concentration camps."

You have already told us about the lengthy report which you took
to Kaltenbrunner in Berlin, so I will omit the remainder of paragraph
5.

"6. The 'final solution' of the Jewish question meant the complete
extermination of all Jews in Europe. I was ordered to establish
extermination facilities at Auschwitz in June, 1941. At that time,
there were already three other extermination camps in the Government
General: Belzek, Treblinka and Wolzek. These camps were under the
Einsatzkommando of the Security Police and S.D. I visited Treblinka
to find out how they carried out their extermination. The Camp
Commandant at Treblinka told me that he had liquidated 80,000 in the
course of half a year. He was principally concerned with liquidating
all the Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto. He used monoxide gas, and I did
not think that his methods were very efficient. So when I set up the
extermination building at Auschwitz, I used Cyclon B, which was a
crystallised prussic acid which we dropped into the death chamber
from a small opening. It took from 3 to 15 minutes to kill the people
in the death chamber, depending upon climatic conditions. We knew
when the people were dead because their screaming stopped. We usually
waited about half an hour before we opened the doors and removed the
bodies. After the bodies were removed our special commandos took off
the rings and extracted the gold from the teeth of the corpses."

Is that all true and correct, witness?

A. Yes.

Q. Incidentally, what was done with the gold which was
taken from the teeth of the corpses, do you know?

A. Yes.

Q. Will you tell the Tribunal?

A. This gold was melted down and brought to the chief
medical office of the S.S. at Berlin.

Q. "Another improvement we made as compared with Treblinka
was that we
built our gas chamber to accommodate 2,000 people at one time
whereas at Treblinka their 10 gas chambers only accommodated 200
people each. The way we selected our victims was as follows: we had
two S.S. doctors on duty at Auschwitz to examine the incoming
transports of prisoners. The prisoners would be marched passed one of
the doctors who would make 'spot' decisions as they walked by. Those
who were fit for work were sent into the camp. Others were sent
immediately to the extermination plants. Children of tender years
were invariably exterminated since, by reason of their youth, they
were unable to work. At Treblinka the victims almost always knew that
they were to be exterminated. We followed a better policy at
Auschwitz by endeavouring to fool the victims into thinking that they
were to go through a delousing process. Of course, frequently they
realised our true intention and we sometimes had riots and
difficulties due to that fact. Very frequently women would hide their
children under the clothes, but of course when we found them we would
send the children in to be exterminated. We were required to carry
out these exterminations in secrecy but naturally the foul and
nauseating stench from the continuous burning of bodies permeated the
entire area and all of the people living in the surrounding districts
knew that exterminations were going on at Auschwitz."